Fox News host Tucker Carlson and former Representative Tulsi Gabbard’s defense of Russian President Vladimir Putin have apparently put them comfortably in the Kremlin’s good graces.
During a broadcast on Russian state television this week, Gabbard was apparently mentioned in very friendly terms by one of Putin’s most prominent propagandists, Vladimir Soloviev.
He introduced Gabbard, a Democratic primary candidate for the 2020 presidential race, as “our friend Tulsi,” according to a translation by Russian media analyst Julia Davis, a columnist for the Daily Beast.
Then a clip was aired of Gabbard’s appearance on Monday’s episode of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” in which she suggested that President Joe Biden was secretly plotting to remove Putin from power.
After the clip aired, a panelist reportedly asked, “Is she some kind of Russian cop?”
According to Davis’ translation, Soloviev said so.
During Monday’s interview, Gabbard argued that Biden was pushing for regime change in Russia through “economic warfare”.
“They are doing this by waging this modern siege against Russia, isolating, restraining and destroying their economy, starving the Russian people in the hope that the Russian people or military will revolt and revolt. come and overthrow their government and get rid of Putin,” she said during part of the clip that aired in Russia.
On Sunday, Biden said Putin “cannot stay in power” in off-script remarks during a speech in Poland. White House officials were quick to clarify that Biden was not advocating regime change in Russia, but that “Putin should not be allowed to wield power over his neighbors or the region.”
But according to Gabbard, “it wasn’t a blunder at all” and Biden is “lying” about his true motives.
The Putin-friendly rhetoric is nothing new to the former Hawaii congresswoman. Last month, as Putin began his invasion of Russia, Gabbard blamed the US, NATO and Ukraineclaiming that the war “could have been easily avoided” had NATO “simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s accession to NATO”.
She has also believed in a Russian-backed conspiracy theory about US biological labs in Ukraine, which US officials have warned could serve as a justification for Russia to use biological and chemical weapons against Ukraine.
In 2019, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested in an interview that Gabbard, then a contender for the Democratic presidential field, was being groomed by Russia as an “asset” who would act as a third-party candidate and help a Republican president. Gabbard filed a defamation suit against Clinton and later dropped it over the “assets” comment.
Carlson has been a favorite of Russian propagandists for weeks now. The Fox News host has been featured repeatedly on Russian state-sponsored television for defending Russia and criticizing the US, NATO and Ukraine, and was reportedly even supported by the Kremlin in a leaked memo to state media. .
Earlier this week, he promoted a bizarre theory to keep Putin in power, suggesting that Islamist extremists would somehow get their hands on the country’s nuclear weapons and use them on Americans if he was removed.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
